Cases - Balfour Beatty Construction Northern Ltd v Modus Corovest Ltd
Record details
- Name
- Balfour Beatty Construction Northern Ltd v Modus Corovest Ltd
- Date
- [2008]
- Citation
- EWHC3029 (TCC)
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Adjudication - owed liquidated damages cannot use provisions of HGCRA - required to give a reasoned decision
- Summary
-
An employer who is owed liquidated damages cannot use the provisions of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 to suspend the works by denying access to the contractor until the sum claimed has been paid.
The requirement to give a reasoned decision may be satisfied even if relatively brief reasons are given and even if the adjudicator asserts that his decision was not intended to be a reasoned decision. In this case the adjudicator had not realised that he was obliged to give a reasoned decision as that requirement was buried deep in muddled and complex contract documents. Neither party had pointed this requirement out to him. When he did produce his decision his decision was challenged on the basis that it needed to be issued with reasons. The judge found in fact that the 8 or 9 pages of reasons in that case were sufficient to discharge that obligation.
It was not wrong for the adjudicator to have taken consideration of submissions made in a ‘reply’ without asking for a ‘rejoinder’. The responding party did not seek to make any further submissions, nor had they challenged the adjudicator’s proposed timetable did not make any provision for submission of further documents after the reply.